Staff Briefing

Lunchtime in the sunshine during the annual Forestry England Staff briefing, held at Rheged this year. Not only do you get to hear about initiatives and projects in other parts of the North district but you catch up with the nicest and most interesting bunch of people you are likely to meet. All of them working to deliver the multi-outcomes  of providing recreation and well-being spaces, creating homes for wildlife, re-wilding with native species  and producing sustainable timber so everybody's work story is fascinating to listen too.
I have to say that usually the health and safety part of the briefing is a bit stodgy but Aaron gave an inspired talk this year on the life cycle of the tick, (ixodes ricinus) delving deep into its need for blood at each change of state from poppy-seed sized nymph  to whopping well fed 10mm egg laying adult. Its spit has both anticoagulants to keep the host's blood flowing and analgesics so the bite is not felt. It has no eyes but can make its way up grass stems by touch and sense a potential host's body chemistry with its front legs. If it didn't carry Lyme disease and other nasties it would be quite a pleasant little hitch-hiker, but June is the month they are most rampant and we all carry tick removers as a matter of course.